The Rules for Moderation, after a break. 

Maybe you have taken a break. Stopped for a while. Done dry January or even given up for a year.  It’s been great, interesting, you have learnt a lot and you feel healthier and happier.  However, now you want to have a drink, just the one. “Ones ok, right?”

I get asked this question a lot.  People can take a break or give up.  They can change their lives so things are working.  But then what?

Do you start drinking again?

Is it ok to drink again?

Questions, questions.

Hopefully you know by now I am not the fun police. I am all about helping you to live a life that works for you. Its cheesy but true – live the life of your dreams.  And we all know if you are drinking or using drugs that’s not really going to work.

You don’t have to be abstinent forever unless you want to. Or it would cause significant problems if you started drinking or partying again.  Some people...

I have quite a few people telling me in their early days that they are really struggling with being sober/alcohol free or taking a break.  It doesn’t matter what you call it. The issues are generally the same.

What happens is people come to me when something isn’t working in their life. 9 times out of 10 people are usually drinking too much, partying too much or taking too many drugs.

And it doesn’t necessarily mean there is a problem with that, it’s just something isn’t working.  Maybe they can’t sleep, their relationships not working, are feeling anxious and so on.  Alcohol, drugs, caffeine all these things can be a contributing factor.

We start by stripping it back.  Stop the drinking, the drug use, the excessive caffeine consumption, (I can hear you say why caffeine?) the thing with coffee and I mean weapons grade coffee which more of us our drinking now is, it’s a stimulant. It also comes in variable strengths, so...

What is a Binge Anyway?

Technically a binge drinking session is when you consume anything from 6-8 units or more.

In simple terms, it’s when we drink a large amount of alcohol in a short space of time.

6-8 Units could be: 3 x 175ml glasses of wine = 6.9 units.

Or 4 pints of lager = 8 units

This depends on the strength of the lager and wine.  Also, the size of your wine glass.

It’s easier to think of a binge more in terms of drinking a lot in one go over a short period.  So, you go out and you get drunk within a couple of hours.  I think we all know whether we binge or not.

It’s the nights out that we can’t quite remember, when we spend the day after piecing together what happened.  The weekend spent feeling terrible: ill, sick, headache, bad stomach, embarrassed and eating way too much comfort food to get through the hangover.

Maybe these feelings even tip into feeling depressed and anxious into Monday and Tuesday.

What Can You Do to Help...

Cravings 

A powerful desire for something, a hunger, a thirst, want, urge, need.

There are lots of different words that sum up how we feel about cravings.

People ask me about cravings all the time. When will they stop? When will they go? People seem to worry and panic about them.

Let’s get a few things straight.

People have cravings all the time for many different things and many different reasons.  I would go so  far as to say there is no rhyme or reason to them. 

Its ok, don’t panic, a craving won’t kill you.  It’s just a feeling, something that pops into your mind, a thought.

Think of it like an emotion.  You feel many different emotions throughout the day.  Happy, sad, thoughtful, angry, frustrated, elated, love.  The list is endless.

Most of us don’t react to every single feeling we have.  If you do then please get some help, you don’t need to be a slave to your emotions.

So, you are going to have...

You have reached a point where you just don’t want to drink all the time.  You want to get a grip on it.

You feel rough. You’ve lost your sparkle. Put on some extra weight. You feel a bit low. Life is a struggle.

Are you fed up with the hangovers? Those embarrassing days after when you try and figure out what you said or did?

It’s become a habit, a bad habit.

There could be many reasons why you are ready to just take a break.

You don’t need to have thought any further than that.

Here’s the good news, it’s good to take a break, not in a Rachel and Ross kind of way.  But in an I care about myself and my health kind of way.

Alcohol is a toxin a poison, same as if you were eating McDonald’s everyday or a big bag of sweets.  At some point, there is going to be some sort of effect on your health.

Or it may be as simple as that you have lost your bounce.

One of the biggest things I hear when I work with people when they first...

It’s perhaps unusual for a wine blogger who spends most of their time extolling the virtues of particular wines to remind us to drink sensibly. At this time of year, though, it’s important to remind ourselves, that we might be overdoing it.

Excess calories from wine are probably the reason I can’t get into my party dresses this year, despite having swum 50 miles for charity in the last 13 weeks. Worried: You’ll find a calorie calculator here which will give you an idea of the impact of your tipple on your waistline and on your health.

For me at Purple Teeth, my goal is to help people drink better. That could mean drinking less. Certainly since I’ve been working in the wine business more and in Customer Experience Consultancy less, I’ve had to drink less. Counter-intuitive perhaps, but as I’ve learned more about wine, my tastes have become rather more expensive than my income allows. So I drink better, but less.

Wine is a luxury good...

We all want great skin right?

Maybe you are lucky and your skin is like something out of a photo shoot first thing in the morning. But for a lot of us that isn’t the case.  And it’s often not until there is a problem with our skin that we pay attention and start looking for solutions.

And when you do look, oh my gosh, there is so, so much information, lotions and potions mostly.  Cleanser, toner, exfoliator, serum, anti-aging creams, moisturiser and the list goes on and on.

And I have been guilty of it myself, buying into those big brands and promises, clever branding and advertising.  I think I spent £100 on one trip to decleor in desperation to sort my skin out.  And guess what, it didn’t help.  Then I went on to Clinique, it sort of helped, but it’s a very expensive little habit.

What was clear is the cheaper ones made it worse for sure.

I personally didn’t think I was that vain until I had a chronic skin disorder and I...

Last night a DJ saved my life, well actually it wasn’t the DJ it was the partner dancing.  Don’t ask me why but it did. 

I have always loved to dance, as a child I spent my time dressing up and choreographing routines to all my favourite records, from Abba to Edwin star and flight of the bumble bees.  Many a day spent in my leotard and disco glitter, closing my eyes and feeling the music, like only a child can. I never attended a dance class, something about our working class upbringing, we didn't do things like that when I was a kid. 

And as an adult I continued to go where the music and dancing took me.  

Then I had a difficult period in my life like we all do, after all that’s life.  Completely as a result of bad decisions I had made along the way.  To cut a long story short – I married the wrong man, a very difficult man and my life got tough for a long time. 

In the middle of it I reached an all time low, my...

I love peoples life stories, stories of change.

I find them inspiring. We can learn from each other.

Listen to Lillies story of change. She starts of quiet reticent as you can hear she feels bad about certain aspects of her past, but keep listening as there are some gems of advice in there.

https://soundcloud.com/stephanie-ichange21/extra-ordinary-people-podcast-2

Alcohol and Cocaine. A Match Made in Heaven? How to Break the Cycle. 

Your cocaine use has become a problem, maybe you are a weekend binge user with your alcohol, an occasional party user, or maybe it has got out of control and you are using a lot and often.

Searching for how to stop taking cocaine? It might be that you only use cocaine when you have been drinking and you would really rather not.  It adds to your disinhibited feeling when you are drunk, adds a confident edge to you that actually you don’t really like even though it may feel good at the time; or compounds the feeling of “oh no what did I say and do last night?”. Who did I talk at? Who did I offend?

Cocaine and alcohol

Alcohol is a gateway to so many things and drug use can be one of those things.  If you are someone that only takes cocaine (or other drugs) when you have been drinking and your intention is not to take any drugs, then the simple answer is take some time off the...